"At Culture's Edge" Call for Papers

A Conference sponsored by the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame:

Hybrid Irelands: At Culture¹s Edge (Abstracts due November 15th, 2011)
A Graduate-Student Conference Exploring the Relationship between Hybridity and Irish Literature

Place: University of Notre Dame

Date:  March 29-31, 2012

Keynote Speakers: Terry Eagleton (University of Lancaster, University of

Notre Dame)

  David Lloyd (University of Southern California)

  Clair Wills (Queen Mary, University of London)

Poetry Reading: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

  Medbh McGuckian (tentative) (Queen¹s University, Belfast)

In recent literary and cultural analyses, Ireland¹s unique relation to various notions of hybridity has been given preliminary consideration. Whether pertaining to genres and styles, discourses and disciplines, or identities and influences, it has become apparent that a defining feature of many Irish works is their resistance to traditional, narrow categorization.

In an attempt to expand upon these earlier approaches, the Keough-Naughton Institute at the University of Notre Dame will be holding a three-day graduate-student conference to address the relationship between hybridity and Irish literature, with a special focus on texts from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Submissions might interrogate past engagements with the concept of hybridity definition are specific to Ireland.


We invite criticism that focuses on conventionally understood literary genres (poetry, fiction, drama, memoir) as well as work from related fields, including but not limited to history, art, theory, folklore, material culture, and film studies. Furthermore, because the nature of hybridity suggests a coming-together of different elements, one of our goals is to cultivate a critical approach that is itself hybrid; in other words, we very much encourage interdisciplinary approaches to the topic. Our hope is to facilitate a critical conversation that envisions a hybrid Ireland


We're also pleased to announce that we will be able to offer a limited number of international scholarships for graduate students attending the conference from abroad. To apply for these scholarships, in addition to the
abstract, please submit a 500 word statement explaining the importance of the conference to you own work.

Suggested topics:
Transnational Poetics
Generic Crossovers
Contemporary Engagements with Folklore
Transatlantic Fictions
Culture and Immigration
Ireland in Translation
Evolving Images in Film and Art
Recontextualizing ³Literary Ireland²
Dialects and Language Change
Dislocated Spaces
Print Culture and Textual Authorship

Abstracts should be no longer than 150 words. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2011. Please email your abstracts to hybridIE@nd.edu

For questions or concerns, please contact John Dillon and Nathaniel Myers at hybridIE@nd.edu hybridIE@nd.edu> , or look us up on Facebook (search: Hybrid Irelands).